Only Child

by Andrew Vachss

  “Like improv?” Cyn asked her.

  “No. Not like improv at all. Because there was a script. Only I was the only one who knew what it was.”

  “How did that work?” I asked, making a “Give me more!” gesture toward my face.

  “It’s a new form of vérité,” she said, darting her tongue quickly over her upper lip. “Very complicated. They...the other girls...they were supposed to be auditioning for parts in a movie. I mean, the movie was that they were supposed to be auditioning. Like, that was the plot. Only, there were two plots. The real plot was that Adrienne had humiliated me at school, and I planned the whole thing to get even. The movie, I mean. It was all a fake. Am I telling this all right?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I assured her. “Just keep talking, so we get enough tape. And bring your hands into it a little. Just touch your cheek once in a while. Like...that! Yes, exactly!”

  “Perfect,” Rejji pronounced.

  “I had the only acting job, actually,” the girl went on in a cat-with-cream voice. “But the others never knew it. I had to make it real. Like, I really had set the whole thing up myself, just so I could give it to Adrienne. See, they were acting like they were acting, that was the script. The plot, I mean. One of the plots. But I was acting like I wasn’t acting, see?”

  “Ummm...”

  “Vision was right, about what he told me. He said people want to be in the movies so bad, they use their fantasies like a shoehorn—they make things fit.

  “I mean, Adrienne, nobody could see her face. What did she think she was auditioning for, ass model? So, if I had set the whole thing up, just so I could do that to her, it would have worked. In real life, I mean. The same exact thing. That’s the vérité. I didn’t actually set it up, but if I was a good enough actress, it would be just like I did.”

  The girl glanced over at Rejji, who gave her an encouraging nod. She darted her tongue again, went on:

  “You know what I told him? Vision? I told him, if this was really real, like I had planned it all for revenge, you know what would happen? We’d have to do a lot of takes. So Adrienne’s fat ass could get paddled over and over again.”

  “Was that what you did?”

  “No,” she said, pouty. “Vision said that the camera would know.”

  “What does that mean?” Cyn asked her, a reporter interviewing a star.

  “Well,” the girl said, tossing her hair slightly, “in real life, she wouldn’t start with her ass all red, see? That would give the whole thing away. So we had to do it all in one take. And I did it, perfect,” she said, chesty with self-satisfaction.

  “What happened with your audition?” I asked.

  “Well...nothing. Yet. Vision said, even if I didn’t get picked for a part, my tape would make the rounds. He had more of me, too, in case they wanted to see other stuff. Like more of my face, like you’re doing here. And I got paid, too,” she said proudly.

  “Is that right?”

  “I made five hundred dollars,” she said smugly. “Plus, I got to beat Adrienne’s ass. And she didn’t get paid a cent.”

  “What’s the score?” I said into the cell phone.

  “I’m not gonna lie; we been playing for the tie.”

  “That’s not us. We need another move.”

  “Got one,” the Prof said. “But Michelle finds out what we running, she’s gonna come gunning, bro.”

  “You got Terry out there alone?”

  “What you want us to do, Schoolboy? Play ofay? This here’s the boy’s turf, not ours.”

  “But you’ve got Clarence close?”

  “He’s right here with me,” the little man said. “Just a coupla niggers in the parking lot of this monfucious mall, anybody looks.”

  “Does the Mole know?”

  “Man wants to speak to you,” the Prof said, answering my question.

  “You’re a light sleeper,” Rejji said.

  “And you two would make lousy burglars,” I told them, glancing at my watch—three-thirteen. “What’ve you been up to? This town can’t have that much going for it.”

  “We were with Kori,” Cyn said. “Playing sorority initiation.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked Rejji, who was draped over the foot of the bed, on her belly, a pillow under her hips.

  “She’s an amateur,” Rejji said. “But she knows what she likes.”

  “I appreciate you taking one for the team,” I told her.

  “Me? Please! We taught her a new game. It’s called ‘turning the tables.’ Maybe you heard of it.”

  “Yeah. What did you get out of her?”

  “You mean, after Cyn made her—”

  “Rej, you can tell me all about it some other time, okay? But, for now, how about you go back to where you started?”

  “She’s not a rocket scientist, Burke. But she’s smart enough to know when to be scared.”

  “Of this ‘Vision’ guy?”

  “No. According to her, he’s a real sweetheart. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It’s the twins.”

  “Who?”

  “Stop teasing, bitch,” Cyn said, walking over and giving Rejji a loud spank on the bottom. She sat down on the bed, facing toward where I was propped up against the headboard. “Twin brothers,” she said to me. “Brett and Bryce Heltman. Used to be hot-stuff athletes, a few years ago. Big, strong boys. With really foul tempers. Kori says she heard they got away with murder when they were in school—they were seniors when she was still in junior high, so it’s just rumors, but she sure believes every word.”

  “And they’re with Vision?”

  “Not ‘with’ him, like part of his crew or anything. But...And I want to tell you, Burke, this is all stuff she ‘heard,’ okay? So it could be one hundred percent bullshit....

  “There was this girl mad at Vision. Because of some video thing, Kori doesn’t know for sure. The girl ended up gang-banged. They didn’t just fuck her, they fucked her up. Broke her jaw and one of her arms. And they stuck a—”

  “I get it. And word is that was these twins’ work?”

  “That’s all it is, the ‘word,’” she said. “The girl never...Well, it never went to court. The girl said she didn’t know who did it. But, supposedly, she told one of her friends that it was the twins.”

  “Maybe it was. But that doesn’t mean there was any—”

  “Kori knows of at least two more.”

  “Girls who got raped?”

  “No. People who got the crap pounded out of them right after they had some kind of beef with Vision. And here’s what’s not a rumor. Kori went to meet him, Vision, once. At the Tackapausha Preserve—that’s, like, a big nature park, somewhere around where they live. She figured Vision wanted to tape her outdoors or something. When she got there, he walks her down this trail. At the end, sitting on a tree trunk, there’s the twins. She said they didn’t do anything, but they scared her to death—it was like being in a cave, back in those woods.”

  “What was Vision doing?”

  “Taping.”

  “Taping what?”

  “Taping her being scared, Kori said. And probably taping her when she ran away.”

  “Which one is the paddling tape?” I asked Michelle.

  “They’re all labeled, honey. With Post-its. I’ve got the master list here.” She ran her finger down a column, said, “It’s number four.”

  I carried it over to the workbench the Mole had put together. Flicked on the gooseneck halogen, picked up the magnifying glass, double-checking.

  “NV,” I said.

  “What does that tell us?” Michelle asked.

  “I don’t know yet, girl. We need to sort them first.”

  It took longer than I’d have thought, rechecking the tiny little brands. When we were done, we had one high stack, and one short one. And one orphan.

  CV: The dogfights, the NHB contest, the jump-in tapes...

  NV: The swastika spray-painters, a girl trying on blue jeans in a booth, the sorori
ty paddling...

  FV: Just one. Vonni. Running.

  “We tanked,” Terry said, walking into the suite, disconsolate.

  “Burke didn’t,” Michelle said brightly.

  “What’d you crack, Jack?”

  “I’m not sure,” I told the Prof. “Where’s Cyn and Rej?”

  “I’ll get them,” Terry volunteered, ignoring his mother’s look.

  “Those codes must mean something,” I told them. “And Cyn and Rej may have given us a roadmap.”

  Rejji ducked her head, modestly. Cyn crossed her long legs, displaying the pronounced flex-line on her thigh.

  “The NV and the CV ones, they look alike, right?” I said. “Real. Like someone snuck a camera into whatever was going on. Only what this Kori told us, the NV one—the one she did, anyway—it was a scam. A production, all right, but not the one the players thought it was. And one of them, Kori, she was in on it from the beginning. An acting job. For her, not for the rest, no matter what they thought. If we assume all the NV ones are the same game, then one of the spray-painters was in on it with Vision, but the others thought they were making a movie. Acting.”

  “Or maybe they didn’t know at all,” Cyn said thoughtfully.

  “But what would be in it for—?” Michelle asked.

  “For Kori, it was doing something she wanted to do, any-way,” I said, as Cyn nodded agreement. “And getting paid for it. Plus believing that she was the only one doing the real acting. That’s a big-hit trifecta. It could be the same for the play-Nazis, if one of them wasn’t playing. Let’s say he wants to be the leader of some ‘white power’ crew, but he doesn’t have what it takes to pull that off. Vision tells them that they’re acting, okay? Auditioning for the movies. But the guy, the one who’s in on it, he gets to be what he wants, if only for a little while. Just like Kori did. And the tape is the proof.”

  “That young woman. The one trying on the dungarees. She was alone, mahn,” Clarence pointed out.

  “I think I have that one scoped, too,” I said. “None of these loops have titles, or credits. I don’t know whether we’re seeing the whole thing, or just some snip out of the middle. But it could have been a deal where the script is supposed to be some girls playing a trick on their friend, sticking a little camera in their pocketbook, so they made a tape of her changing. Then they post it on the Internet or something.”

  “If that was the script, then which one would be the actor?”

  “Not the one we saw,” Cyn said. “Not the girl pulling her pants down, the one taping it. I’ll bet there was more to it. The stripper knows it’s a ‘movie,’ so she takes her pants off while ‘acting’ like she doesn’t know she’s being taped. But the one doing the taping, she’s doing the real acting, because her job is to get those pants off. Same as with Kori, see?”

  “Huh!” I said as it hit me.

  Cyn put her arms over her head, stretched luxuriously. “I just look like this,” she said. “It’s not all I know.”

  “Tell him!” Michelle applauded.

  “But what do they get from this, mahn?” Clarence asked me. “The tape would be the same if the girl was acting or not, yes? All the cameraman wants is to see her pants come down.”

  “No,” I said, “he wants more than that. I’m just not sure what.”

  “I got it! I got it!” Terry said, running over to the VCR and hitting “Pause.”

  “What do you have?” the Mole asked.

  “‘CV.’ I know what it stands for. All those tapes, they weren’t acting, right? They were just real things, that the guy taped. Cinéma vérité!”

  “What’s that?” I asked him.

  “Just what’s on those tapes, Burke. Like Frederick Wiseman did in Titicut Follies.”

  “Terry, I got no idea who...”

  “No, listen to me,” the kid said, all worked up. “Cinéma vérité just means, like, super-realistic. You watch it, you don’t know if it’s a documentary or a story. That’s what all that stuff was like, right? The pit bulls and the fighting and stuff?”

  “Yeah...”

  “And ‘CV’? Come on!”

  “I am certain he is correct,” the Mole said.

  “When’s the last time you watched a movie?” Michelle said to him. “But he is so right,” she said to us.

  “Okay...But, if the CV stuff is real, and the NV stuff is acting, at least for some of the players, what’s FV?” I asked the room. “Because that’s the only one Vonni’s in.”

  Nobody said anything.

  “I never heard of them,” Wolfe told me.

  Rain slanted across the windshield of her battered old Audi. Bruiser was lying across the back seat, a thick blot of darkness in the shadow.

  “I’m not looking for their reps,” I told her. “What I need is their location.”

  “So you can...?”

  “Ask them some questions.”

  “I know who you’re doing this work for, remember?”

  “I’d never ask you to put someone on the spot.”

  “Ask me? No, you wouldn’t do that. What you’re offering to do here is pay me.”

  “If I was doing it so I could take them out, you’re the last person I’d bring into it,” I told her, truthfully.

  “And why’s that? Because you respect me so much?”

  “You know that’s true,” I said, ignoring her tone. What I didn’t say was the other truth—if I used Wolfe to bird-dog a hit, I knew exactly how she’d pay me back.

  “You think it’s someone from our world?” Cyn asked me that night.

  “Your work world?”

  “Yes. Power power power.”

  “I don’t see how, Cyn.”

  “There’s those who say violent porn causes people to...”

  “That’s not your world.”

  “No, no; I didn’t mean me and Rejji, the way we play. But...you know about our Internet business?”

  “No.”

  “The deal is, we live together—which is the truth—and I own her—which is true—and if you’re a subscriber—we take credit cards, checks, and money orders—you can dial up our daily channel and watch me discipline her. If you’re a premium subscriber, you can tell me how you want her disciplined, and watch it on a private channel.

  “It’s simple enough. We seeded the ground with a few pictures. I have a special boudoir chair I punish Rej in. It kind of makes her lean way forward....”

  Rejji got up off the floor, walked over, and sat on a straight chair so she was facing backwards, her legs positioned outside the rungs. She turned her head to the side, arched her back deeply so her bottom protruded over the edge.

  “See?” Cyn said. “That’s a good example. And there’s plenty of others. Always a market for le vice anglais. Me birching her, topless, that was our best seller.”

  “You making any money?”

  “Look at her,” Cyn said pridefully. “We’re making a ton.”

  “Nothing illegal about it, either,” I complimented her. “If you can skate under the IRS, you’re golden.”

  “We’re a small business,” she said, smiling. “We even have a pension plan. And health insurance.”

  “Okay, but what does this have to do with...?”

  “Burke, if you saw some of the ‘requests’ we get, you’d lose your lunch.”

  “People have weird tastes.”

  “Some of them want me to hurt her. I don’t mean make her cry, Burke. I mean—”

  “Yeah, but...”

  “But what? Do you understand what I’m really talking about?”

  “Yeah. And I don’t think whoever asks for stuff like that got the idea from you spanking your girlfriend.”

  “Come here!” Cyn said to Rejji. The dark-haired girl slid off the chair and crawled over to where we were sitting on the couch.

  “Tell him,” Cyn ordered her.

  Rejji put her head in Cyn’s lap. The blonde girl patted her. Gently, comforting.

  “That’s how it start
ed. Before we were on the Net. With Gresham. She wanted to do it to me herself,” Rejji said softly. “Hurt me for real. She...she terrified us. And when we wouldn’t go along, that’s when she—”

  “I know,” I said. “And it’s all over now. But this thing...with Vonni, it doesn’t scan for me like S&M gone ballistic.”

  “You know that woman, Lana something, the one up in the Northwest somewhere?” Cyn asked me, stroking Rejji’s hair.

  “Never heard of her.”

  “She was a branded slave in a power-exchange group. That’s supposed to be an all-consent thing, right? Exchange. Like me and Rejji do, our pact. You know how it ended up there? The ‘masters,’ they finally couldn’t get it up for consent. So they kidnapped and raped some college girls, visiting here from Japan. They figured Japanese girls, they’d be natural submissives. And this woman, she was right there with them. Helping out.”

  “So they were morons as well as freaks. What’s your point?”

  “It can spring back on itself,” Cyn said. “If you can’t control being in control, it can amp over. Master the master.”

  “That’s not just for sex,” I said.

  Rejji looked up from Cyn’s lap, turned her head toward me. “Power power power,” she said, barely whispering the words.

  Sleep sneered at me. My mind was so hard on Vonni that I felt a stabbing pain behind my eyes. I tried to drift—sometimes that worked.

  I wondered if I was really looking at the same kind of overlap Cyn had been talking about. Where the truth was.

  Power power power.

  I’d walked Candy on a leash. Listened to her wet-whisper how she’d do whatever I told her to; whatever it took. Candy took a lot. Mostly people’s lives. Candy would be whatever she thought you wanted her to be. She used the roles like a deranged Doberman I’d known once. He hated other dogs; I never knew why. His trademark was to pretend to be injured or crippled. So they’d come close.

  Belle liked to be spanked. She also liked driving getaway cars, brawling, and revenge. She was about as submissive as a pit bull on angel dust. But she could take it, all right. The last thing she took was a hail of police bullets meant for me. I told her I loved her only that one time, just before she went over.